"But there are no baked apples." Fred, the waiter, said this.
"Go and tell the chef I want a baked apple."
"I did, sir. There are none."
"Explain to him that I always have a baked apple, here."
"There is applesauce—sir."
Fred is Viennese. His sorrowful, wise eyes meandered over to meet mine. They were expressionless. But the fact that they had moved toward me was, in itself, communication.
"I do not like applesauce. Slippery pudding! Go and tell the chef I want my usual baked apple."
The churl who spoke was familiar to me by sight. An Englishman—a VIP during the war—who had often stayed at the Astolat. A medium-sized man of sixty with a red face and eyes like gray gas. A brittle British voice, snotty in every particular. An iron-gray Kaiser Wilhelm mustache and a way of smacking his lips underneath it, when he was in a temper, that shook its points.
He was always accompanied by his wife. As a rule, they ate quietly—talking together now and then, and more often just swilling in food. She was a lank, vapid woman with a toadstool's complexion, a chin like a fist, and hair tormented into little knobs—as if she absent-mindedly had cooked it, rather than coiffed it—and burned it in the process. Lumpy, burned hair, a disgusting dish of it—and a voice like claws, to match her master's.
She stared, now, at her empty plate, and said nothing. She did not seem to be ashamed, or embarrassed, or to be waiting for a storm to subside. She was a woman born without the knack for yielding or apology. She merely looked at her plate because she would be God-damned if she cared to look at anything or anybody else.